Owls bunk down at Seal Beach naval base

Aug. 30, 2013

Updated Aug. 31, 2013 8:40 p.m.

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Looks like a molting female adult burrowing owl is given back her feather by a juvenile burrowing owl at Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station. They are listed as a "species of special concern" by the state Department of Fish and Wildlife. CINDY YAMANAKA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Whooo are you, this elusive burrowing owl might be thinking staring at the camera. The juvenile owl turn its head to get another perspective because the eyes are so big it can't move. There are only three or four pairs of breeding owls in Orange County, LA County and Santa Barbara County, and they all nest at Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station. CINDY YAMANAKA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Lose something? A juvenile burrowing owl picks up a fallen feather from a molting female adult at Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station. Observers were able to get about 25 feet close before they flew away. CINDY YAMANAKA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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The sounds of jumping fish, an occasional camera shutter and bird calls from an iPhone breaks the silence at Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station. The base's 1,000-acre wildlife refuge is now home to three or four pairs of elusive breeding owls. CINDY YAMANAKA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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A molting female adult burrowing owl soars above a salt marsh at Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station. It stayed on land near a juvenile burrowing owl a majority of the time before a human got too close. CINDY YAMANAKA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Navy biologist Bob Schallmann points out, "It's a day's worth of (undigested) grub." Remnants of bugs are found at the mouth of the burrowing owl's nest which they took over from a squirrel at Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station. CINDY YAMANAKA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Navy biologist Bob Schallmann observes an adult and juvenile burrowing owls at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station. The base and the state Department of Fish and Wildlife have worked together well to help the owls, according to Schallmann. CINDY YAMANAKA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Navy biologist Bob Schallmann could watch burrowing owls "all day" at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station. He came armed with a spotting scope and a top-of-the-line binoculars. CINDY YAMANAKA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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A juvenile burrowing owl slowly cocks its head to the right then left while observing observers Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station. It stayed in the same spot for a couple minutes then disappeared into the nest. CINDY YAMANAKA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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A hawk watches potential prey from about 40 feet away. The burrowing owls stared right back. There was no attack at the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station. CINDY YAMANAKA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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A squirrel was displaced from its nest by burrowing owls at Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station. CINDY YAMANAKA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Looks like a molting female adult burrowing owl is given back her feather by a juvenile burrowing owl at Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station. They are listed as a "species of special concern" by the state Department of Fish and Wildlife.CINDY YAMANAKA, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Other protected creatures

The burrowing owl isn't the only species that Schallmann and Gilligan keep an eye out for on the Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station. In fact, five other species on the base are protected under federal or state law.

By the numbers

9 years since the California Fish and Game Commission rejected a petition to list the western burrowing owl as endangered

3 or 4 pairs of breeding burrowing owls at the Seal Beach base, according to biologists

0 pairs in the rest of Orange County

4 or 5 fledgling burrowing owls born in Orange County this year (all on base)

Graphics

Some people complain that there's no more space to build in Orange County. But don't let any burrowing owls hear – they wouldn't give a hoot about the fight over the latest apartment complex.

These diminutive, brown-flecked owls don't live in trees – in fact, they prefer open grassland, where they live like tufted squatters in abandoned burrows. But they're squatters who are nearly extinct in coastal Southern California because the grassland they need to live is almost gone.

The Seal Beach Naval Weapons Station, biologists and conservationists believe, is the only place the burrowing owls can still find the right habitat to settle down in breeding pairs along the Southern California coast between Santa Barbara and just north of San Diego.

“This type of foraging and nesting habitat, which includes flat land and desert, has all been usurped by developers,” said environmental consultant Peter Bloom, one of the bird-watchers tracking the owl population.

In May or June, burrowing owls at the base gave birth to owlets, four or five depending on who's counting. They've spent the summer learning to fly and they'll be off on their winter migration by the beginning of September to the deserts of Mexico, by the biologists' best guess.

While they're gone, the scientists will maintain their burrows, both the ones the owls have stolen from ground squirrels and ones scientists built for them, to preserve a once-widespread, still very popular bird in an area that isn't as open as it used to be.

“It's sort of become iconic of the rangelands and grasslands of California,” said Andrea Jones, director of the Important Bird Areas Program at Audubon California.

Burrowing owls aren't endangered in the U.S. or California, though they're on a watch list in the state as their numbers dwindle. Today, it would be easiest to find them by taking a three-hour drive to the Imperial Valley, where they seem to enjoy the agricultural drainage pipes.

But Bob Schallmann, the Navy biologist managing the three or four pairs of breeding burrowing owls on the Naval Weapons Station, remembers a time when they were widespread in Orange County.

The owl is special to bird-watchers like Schallmann; it's one of the few species that hang out on the ground and choose to occasionally hunt during the day. It tends to stand on perches to look for food.

Schallmann remembers seeing the spindly legged birds in vacant lots when he worked at a Los Alamitos summer camp in the 1970s.

“They were in Los Alamitos all the time before it got built up,” he said.

Burrowing owls were abundant until the 1970s from Seal Beach to Laguna Niguel, Santa Ana to Newport's Back Bay, according to a petition filed with the state in 2003 by the Center for Biological Diversity.

The 8- to 10-inch-tall owls thrive on flat, treeless land where they can spot their meals of insects and small rodents and avoid predators, Jones said. Unfortunately for the owls, that's exactly the terrain developers acquired a taste for in the '60s and '70s in Orange County, and their habitat shrank fast.

Worse, their burrows began disappearing as developers killed off the ground squirrels whose abandoned burrows the owls use for homes.

“If someone has eradicated ground squirrels, they're going to have a hard time making or finding a burrow,” Jones said.

In developed areas, the only reliable open space the generally monogamous owls can count on to build their nests is on airports and Army bases.

“In Orange County, it's almost exclusively on federal land where developers are willing to do some kind of land management and allow ground squirrels to exist,” said Jeff Miller, a conservation advocate with the Center for Biological Diversity.

Among those suitable bits of open land, the Naval Weapons Station is ideal. On the average day, it stores $1.8 billion worth of munitions, according to base spokesman Gregg Smith, servicing approximately 50 ships each year.

Storing so many weapons requires lots of empty space, as a buffer to keep people safe if something goes wrong, Schallmann said. The Seal Beach base is 5,000 acres of peace and quiet where there's hustle and bustle at Camp Pendleton and the Joint Forces Training Base.

“We don't have troops. We don't have live fire. We don't have these big housing areas, nothing like that,” Schallmann said. “It's open space for the purpose of our mission.”

Outside of the weapons depot, burrowing owl conservationists are focusing their energy away from Orange County. The species, which is found throughout the Americas, has seen declines throughout California in the past 20 years.

Miller was particularly worried about a traditional stronghold in the fields of the Imperial Valley that has lost a third of its population since the early '90s.

Schallmann noted the military in general does a good job of managing habitat, so it doesn't run afoul of migratory bird legislation. He said biologists from across the services share strategies for building artificial burrows.

Seal Beach has nine “low-tech” artificial burrows, maintained along with the U.S. National Wildlife Refuge on base, made out of sprinkler boxes and sewer pipe that are covered with a mound of dirt.

Schallmann said the owls are very willing to use the burrows. He said he'd install more if funding ever becomes available.

As for where more burrowing owls will come from, that's a head-scratcher, Schallmann said. He's not even sure what brought the newest pair of owls to Seal Beach.

“That's the thing that makes it interesting – there's no source population anywhere near us,” he said. “It kind of ups the ante of trying to find someone who's the opposite gender in your species. … It's kind of lightning in a bottle in some respects.”

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